


Falling: A Sequel to Muddy Angels

by lyndysambora



Series: Muddy Angels [2]
Category: Bon Jovi (Band), Guns N' Roses
Genre: M/M, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-21
Updated: 2019-12-21
Packaged: 2021-02-26 01:46:57
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 13,198
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21882649
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lyndysambora/pseuds/lyndysambora
Summary: For a few seconds, Jon was quiet, and Richie knew his gut had not lied to him. He had no idea what it was about the roses, or why the ruddy glow of excitement had all but drained from Jon’s face, but he knew it was gonna be bad.
Relationships: Axl Rose/Jon Bon Jovi/Richie Sambora
Series: Muddy Angels [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1575442
Comments: 8
Kudos: 18





	1. Black and Blood

_ **February, 1993** _

Richie noticed the flowers first, and his stomach dropped.

There was no reason, really, for the humongous, decadent bouquet of red and black long-stem roses to thump him in the gut like that, but he stood there, staring at the crystal vase like it was another person in the room. An intruder. 

Jon hadn’t noticed a thing. He bounced into the living room of his hotel suite, higher on adrenaline than Richie had ever remembered seeing him during the early tours. Or maybe Richie had just forgotten how manic the other man could be. How unpredictable. His stomach pulled at him.

Jon spun around. “It’s incredible, isn’t it?”

Richie rubbed his forearm. “Yeah,” he said. “Incredible. I think my arm is gonna fall off.”

“You’ll be fine. Have a drink. I’ll rub it for you. I didn’t know how much I missed being out there, man. We can still put asses in the seats, huh?”

Despite the growing unease inside him, Richie chuckled. “Calm down, you’re gonna have a stroke.”

“Aren’t you excited? They still want us around. I didn’t know if they would. I was afraid we’d be doing Slippery nostalgia tours the rest of our--"

“Hey, who sent the vampire flowers?”

Richie watched the question fall into Jon’s whirling thoughts like a stick in bicycle spokes. It took his friend a moment to gather his brain enough to even notice the bouquet spreading over half the sofa table. 

“I don’t know,” Jon finally said, approaching the offending flora. “They weren’t here earlier.” He fished the tag out of the mass of heady blooms and read it. Silently, to himself.

The muscles in Richie’s shoulders turned to concrete as he watched Jon’s jaw tighten.

“So?” he prompted, though he really wasn’t sure he wanted to know. “What’s it say?”

For a few seconds, Jon was quiet, and Richie knew his gut had not lied to him. He had no idea what it was about the roses, or why the ruddy glow of excitement had all but drained from Jon’s face, but he knew it was gonna be bad.

“_You’re still pretty even with ugly hair. Congrats on getting your right hand back,”_ Jon read, in a hushed monotone. 

“Who the hell is that from?” Richie said, realizing how accusatory he sounded already, and not giving a shit.

Jon fingered the little card for a second before depositing it face-down on the table. “I, um-- Axl Rose. I think.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“I think!”

“Why would you think that?” Richie asked, picking up the card and inspecting it before leveling a narrow-eyed gaze at Jon.

Jon was attempting to keep his voice light and nonchalant. “I ran into him at a hotel in Cali. We had a bit of a… scuffle. I guess.”

“No shit?”

“Yeah.”

“What happened?”

“Starting mouthing off in the bar for no reason,” Jon said, his eyes boring holes into the card that was in Richie’s hands. “We had some words in my room.”

“In your room, huh?”

“Yeah. I got him by the throat at one point. You shoulda seen the look on his face.”

Richie read the card again. “So what does all this mean?”

“Oh, that,” Jon said, and the continued attempt at nonchalance stirred up a thick nausea in Richie’s stomach. “He said we didn’t know about work. That we got by on our looks.”

“He’s one to talk,” Richie said, swallowing against the sickness.

“I know, I told him that.”

“I suppose I’m the right hand, huh?”

The death spiral of the conversation had begun, and Richie knew as solidly as he knew anything in his life that the truth was gonna come out of Jon’s mouth during this conversation. Willing or unwilling, it was gonna come, and neither one of them wanted to hear it out loud.

The other man took a deep breath and closed his eyes. “I slept with him, okay?”

Richie nodded. “I kinda knew it was something like that,” he said, his lips numb. He deposited the card back on the table and turned to leave. 

“What the fuck? Where you going?”

“I gotta get some sleep,” Richie said. 

“So that’s how it’s gonna be?” Jon said. “Like you didn’t fuck other people when we were apart.”

“Not another guy.”

“What does it matter?”

“It matters.”

Richie felt the pressure of impending tears crushing his chest, and he berated himself inwardly for his weakness. He was shocked that his voice was so strong when it came out again.

“And I’m _not_ your right hand, you self-absorbed bastard. He may think of his guitarist that way, but I’ll be damned if you--”

“That is _not_ how it was,” Jon hissed, stepping up close to Richie, and for a second, Richie thought Jon was going to hit him. His eyes had gone dark, but they were growing pink around the rims, and hazy.

“Then how was it?” Richie challenged, feeling himself energized by the idea that Jon might cry before he did. He _should_ cry first. 

“It was… a piss-poor substitute for you,” Jon said, stepping back away from the impending confrontation. He seemed smaller. “Go on and leave if you want, I ain’t stopping you.”

Richie rolled his eyes, then closed them. He sighed. “I don’t want anyone else having you,” he said. 

“He doesn’t have me. It was one night. It wasn’t even a night, it was like an hour or two.”

“Two _hours?”_

“We talked a lot, okay?”

“Yeah, you talked and you fucked and now he’s sending you fucking flowers and inside jokes--”

“It’s not _like_ that--”

“Who fucked who?” Richie said, his eyes drawn again to the bush of flowers by his arm.

“What?”

“Did he fuck you, or did you fuck him?”

“I don’t see how that’s any of your business.”

“Fantastic.”

Richie’s entire body tensed to turn and leave again, before Jon suddenly spoke.

“I fucked him, all right?”

A tiny measure of the tension in Richie slithered out of him. 

“Good,” he said. “Anything else?” 

“I sucked him off,” Jon said, and then quickly added, “I finished it with my hand, though.”

“What else?”

“That’s it.”

“Did you kiss him?”

Jon’s eyebrows scrunched. “Well, yeah,” he said.

“What else?”

“That’s it.”

“You sure?”

“Yeah, what else is there?”

“I don’t know, you tell me.”

They stared at each other for what felt like eternity, before Jon said, “It was one time, Rich. I promise. I swear. I was drunk and mad and… I don’t know. I was lonely. And drunk.”

“You mentioned that.”

“Yeah? Well it bears repeating. I was fucking drunk. I mean, I choked the guy against the wall and then we…”

Jon went silent and stared at the repugnant flowers. The scent of them crawled through the air between them. 

“I can’t stand that you have this memory,” Richie said, hearing how utterly nonsensical and domineering it sounded at the same time, and somehow feeling a tiny thrill from it. “I don’t want him in your mind like that.”

“What am I supposed to do about it, Rich? Go in my head with a fucking Artgum and erase it?”

“Nah,” Richie said, wrapping his fingers over the head of a blood-red rose at the center of the insolent throng and snapping it off. “But maybe I’ll fuck it out of you. How about that?”


	2. Trespass

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A tiny ping of heat exploded in the middle of Jon’s chest, and spread outward, flushing his face, prickling his upper half with light sweat. The top part of his brain, the human part, told him to hang up the phone now, get the voice out of his ear, go find Richie and talk things out. 
> 
> But the primitive part of his brain, that part shared by snakes and sharks and the kinds of humans Jon had no respect for, assaulted him with the same chemicals the drugs electrified in the early days.

Jon lay in bed, eyes fixed on the ceiling, mind resolutely _not_ on his wallet that rested on the nightstand less than two feet away from his head.

Richie had left the suite an hour and fourteen minutes before. Jon knew because he had been watching the clock to keep himself company. An hour and fourteen minutes since Richie had broken the bloom off that rose and squeezed it in his fist while suggesting he should fuck Jon’s memory out of him.

Jon had told him to go.

For a moment, or minutes even, Richie had stood there, staring at him, the soft chocolate of his eyes darkened almost to black, twisting at the petals inside his hand with his thumb and forefinger. Plucking them off, one at a time and dropping them on the carpet. Then he had nodded, as though a difficult concept had finally made itself known to him, and he had tossed the remainder of the rose’s head at Jon’s feet. 

_Let me know when you figure shit out,_ he had said as he left, and it had taken Jon almost a half hour to realize it meant Richie thought there was still something going on between Jon and Axl. That Jon was in a position of needing to choose. The fateful night of fighting and fucking had been over a year and a half before, and he hadn’t spoken to Axl Rose since. Hadn’t really even thought about him. 

Well, not much. Not when Richie was around, at least.

The wallet crept into his thoughts again, and he rolled over to retrieve it. Inside it, in the window where his driver’s license was supposed to be, was a picture of Dorothea and Richie. It was a Polaroid folded and creased down to fit in the space allotted, and it had been taken shortly after Dorothea had found out she was pregnant. All of them had been so happy that day (and Jon and Richie had been slightly drunk), and Jon had taken to snapping Polaroids of the other two all day long. His best friends and the most important people in his life. 

He slipped his fingertips into the crevice behind the picture and sought out the fuzzed, ripped edge of a piece of paper that had been waiting there awhile, behind at least two other pictures before the one of Richie and a pregnant Dorothea. Jon pulled out the scrap and unfolded it on the pillow next to him.

Before he had left the hotel in California, an envelope with nothing written on it, and no postage, had been hand-delivered to his suite by a bellhop. The envelope contained a phone number, written on hotel stationery, and was signed with the initial, _A._ That was it. A phone number, and that _A_. And though Jon had known better, he had torn the blank edges from the piece of stationery, making it as small as he could, and stowed it in that hidden place in his wallet. 

He picked up the phone and got an outside line.

“What?” the voice at the other end said, by way of greeting. It didn’t sound angry or impatient, it was just there. Waiting. An unexpected shiver slithered down Jon’s spine, and he sat up against the headboard, attempted to bring himself into a more aggressive posture. For some reason, he hadn’t expected the man to actually answer his own phone.

“What the fuck did you do that for?” Jon said.

There was a pause, and then the voice, deep and rolling, now sounded slightly amused. “Who is this?”

“You know who this is, you piece of fuck.”

“I was being nice. You got a problem with people being nice?”

“Richie is pissed.”

“That’s a shame.”

“You think it’s funny?”

“Yeah.”

“Fuck you, man.”

“Oh, come on,” Axl said. “What right does he have to be pissed? I can’t be the only one that congratulated you guys.”

“You’re the only one I-- you know.”

Now Axl’s voice was beyond amused. “He _knows_ about that? Why the fuck did you tell him?”

“I _had_ to. He could tell something was going on from my face, and your fucking card.”

Axl chuckled, and it sent another shiver down Jon’s back. “Aww, he’s jealous? That’s cute.”

“I don’t know why I bothered calling--”

“I do. You wanted to talk to me.”

“You’re just full of fucking bullshit, aren’t you?”

“You know what I always regretted about that night?”

A tiny ping of heat exploded in the middle of Jon’s chest, and spread outward, flushing his face, prickling his upper half with light sweat. The top part of his brain, the human part, told him to hang up the phone now, get the voice out of his ear, go find Richie and talk things out. 

But the primitive part of his brain, that part shared by snakes and sharks and the kinds of humans Jon had no respect for, assaulted him with the same chemicals the drugs electrified in the early days. 

“What?” he asked, his heart pounding the way it used to after too much coke.

“I wanted to eat your dick, too,” Axl purred. “I was freaked out and I left, but I shouldn’t have left.”

“Stop,” Jon said. “It’s not fucking funny.” But the heat had already spread to his groin, making his cock twitch and start to swell. 

“Who said I was joking?”

“I can’t be having this conversation,” Jon said, but he could hear the beginnings of an imploring quality in his voice, like he was asking the other man’s permission to be released from the call. Like he was handing his power over. 

This was not lost on Axl. “Who’s gonna stop you?” the man asked. “You can do whatever you want.”

“No. I can’t,” Jon said, staring at the sliver of skin that was visible through the strained fly of his now-tented boxer shorts. He wanted to touch it.

“You can’t talk to me on the phone because of Richie, but you can fuck Richie even though you’re married?”

“My wife and I have an arrangement.”

“That you can fuck Richie?”

“Yes.”

Axl laughed. “That guy’s got you on a short leash, doesn’t he?”

“Fuck off.”

“I coulda sucked your dick,” Axl mused. “Izzy said I was pretty good at it.”

“Fuck off.”

“I wanna make your dick hard now, Bon Jovi. Let me make it hard for you.”

“I’m hanging up,” Jon said, his free fingers digging into the flesh of his thigh, steadying themselves. 

“It’s a small world,” Axl said. “You think I don’t know about your friend?”

“Know _what?”_ Jon demanded. 

“The fact he doesn’t know shit about what it’s like to struggle. His fucking Ward and June Cleaver parents, loving his stupid ass, keeping him safe--”

“That’s not fair--”

“No, it’s not. And kids like you and me dealing with shit no kid should have to deal with--”

“You can’t just--”

“You know it’s true,” Axl said. “And it’s more than that. You think he knows what it’s like to do what you do? Keep the band going, absorb all that friction and pretend it doesn’t burn you up, and then go out there and mind-fuck the audience, over and over and over…”

Jon was quiet, and Axl continued. 

“I know what it’s like,” he said. “And I _really_ wanna mouth-fuck you right now.”

Jon closed his eyes and slid his hand down into his boxer shorts. 

“You there?” Axl said.

“Yeah.”

“What are you doing? Tell me.”

Squeezing the head of his cock in his fist, Jon said, “Hating your fucking guts.”

“Ooh,” Axl murmured. “Keep doing that til you come, okay?”

“Fuck you.”

“Come on.”

“Fuck you.”

“I wanna drink it out of you, don’t make me wait.”

“_Fuck you--_” Jon choked, wrenching a climax from himself so hard he made himself momentarily lightheaded, and the sound of Axl’s soft laughter took a moment to register.

“Maybe our paths will cross again, and I’ll get to lick your cock for real,” the other man said. “Good night, Jon. Enjoy your flowers.”

The line clicked and went silent. 

Jon heaved a long exhale and hung the phone up. He wasn’t sure what he’d been expecting when he’d dialed the number, but it wasn’t twitching legs and a handful of semen. 

_you sure?_

Giving his hand a good wipe on the duvet, Jon stared at the little piece of paper on the bed, all rumpled and battered from having been hidden for so long. Then he picked it up and re-folded it, put it back in its place in his wallet, behind Dorothea and Richie and his future child.


	3. Ashes

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jon had seemed scared of Richie in that moment, when he had decapitated the flower. It was the first and only time Richie had ever seen such a thing from the man, that kind of surprise, and it brought a black cloud of shame down over him. It also sent a zing of something like excitement through him.

Axl rested the phone handset face down on the table and stared at it. He fished the half-crushed pack of cigarettes out of his pocket and lit one, then stared at the phone some more, letting the smoke form a lazy cloud around his head. A small, slightly morbid, part of him had continued to hope, even a year and a half later, that Jon Bon Jovi would call him. 

But honestly, Axl had assumed the note had found its way into the hotel trash the day it had been delivered.

And if someone had asked him to his face why he had had the flowers sent, he might not have been able to pinpoint the reason. Or hell, maybe he could, and he just didn’t want to think about it right yet.

What he did know is that he had been a gigantic asshole just now. He took another long drag on the cigarette and then picked up the handset, clicked it on and listened for the dial tone. Clicked it off. 

It had taken everything inside of him to maintain his air of indifference when he had recognized the voice on the other end of the line. And then, as was his wont, he had amplified that indifference into something manipulative. He didn’t want Jon Bon Jovi anymore than he knew Jon Bon Jovi still wanted him. At least not sexually. But Axl knew enough about people to know that he and Jon were cut from the same cloth-- and what each of them really wanted was power. The _knowledge_ that the other could be had sexually. The awareness that one’s own charisma could undo anything and anyone.

It was kind of lame when he really thought about it.

He had been completely out of line on the phone. It wasn’t so much the sexual talk, that was nothing. It was the calculating things he had said about Richie. Planting the seeds of… disharmony?... between those two, implying that Richie could not possibly understand Jon, had been a shitty thing to do. Axl knew this. But it was force of habit by now. He had learned early on how to use each of his words to cut in five different directions, leaving wounds the victim wouldn’t even notice until later. And besides, it’s not like it wasn’t true. Sambora _had_ been dealt the long straw in life, even from before he was born. Fuck that guy.

Axl smashed the end of the cigarette out directly on the table, pressing his fingertip into it until it burned him. The part about Richie having Jon on a short leash was true, too. Axl knew how smitten Jon was with his right-hand man, because Axl had been in the same boat up until… well, still, if he was being honest with himself. He had only seen Izzy a few times since the man walked out on the tour, and they had fucked once in a mechanical manner like strangers, and afterward, Axl had bawled his goddamn heart out while Izzy chain-smoked and told him to pull himself together, for fuck’s sake. 

Axl knew what it was like to be catastrophically in love with someone who just plain didn’t have as much skin in the game as you. Fuck that shit.

He also knew that he would bed Jon Bon Jovi again in an instant, given the opportunity, just to prove to himself-- and to Jon, and to fucking Sambora-- that he could. So he was an asshole. Sue him.

He lit another cigarette and went to find some booze.

\----------------------------------------

Richie punched a deeper dent in his pillow and laid his head in it, knowing full well he wouldn’t sleep in this dent any better than the last one. Not that he wanted to sleep anyway-- every time he closed his eyes, the fucking flowers were there, superimposed on the insides of his eyelids.

So Jon had slept with someone else. Richie didn’t ask many questions in that regard, and neither did Jon. They didn’t own each other, and they knew that. They couldn’t lay claim to each other’s bodies anymore than they could sign a marriage license. 

But Richie had gotten really comfortable with the idea that he would be the only man in Jon’s life. In a way, it _was_ like laying claim to his friend’s body. And then suddenly it was no longer a true thing between them, no longer an inviolable bond. In fact, it had been untrue for a lot longer than Richie had known. Jon had known, and Richie hadn’t. Richie had been making unsuspecting (and incredible) love to the man since they had reunited, and somehow Jon had never seen fit to own up to the infidelity.

_maybe it just didn’t mean that much_

Richie sat up on his elbow and pummeled his pillow again.

_maybe it did, and that’s why he couldn’t say anything_

He threw himself back down and stared at the clock. Or maybe Jon just knew Richie would react the way he had, and didn’t want to open that can of worms.

But how was he supposed to react? Let Jon off the hook, and go beat the shit out of Axl for it? They weren’t in high school, and Richie wasn’t the kind of guy to just go bash someone’s face in. Pillows, maybe. And roses. The actual plant kind, anyway.

Jon had seemed scared of Richie in that moment, when he had decapitated the flower. It was the first and only time Richie had ever seen such a thing from the man, that kind of surprise, and it brought a black cloud of shame down over him. It also sent a zing of something like excitement through him. 

So Jon suddenly had a bit of a hard-on for the bad boy type, huh? Maybe Richie was doing the wrong thing all this time, keeping his opinions to himself, always being the cheerleader and the rock. Maybe Jon needed some unpredictability. And maybe Axl needed a foot up his ass.

Maybe.

Richie didn’t know for sure about any of it. But he was a hell of a lot more relaxed now, just considering it.

\-----------------------------------------

Jon decided he wasn’t going to sleep, so he got in the shower and let scalding water pour over him. He didn’t know how things had deteriorated so quickly and so thoroughly. One minute, they were celebrating being together again, and the music, and being fucking _alive_, and the next minute, Richie was gone from his room, and possibly his life, and Axl fucking Rose, three time zones away, was sweet-talking Jon into jerking himself off.

It wasn’t a lie when Jon had told Richie that the dalliance with Axl had been a piss-poor substitute for what they had together. Jon didn’t want to fuck Axl again any more than he wanted herpes. And he knew that Axl likely felt the same way about him. But the antagonism itself was intoxicating in a way Jon couldn’t fucking fathom at all. Richie was the most perfect person he had ever met, besides his wife, and to pull the bricks out of the foundation of that because some other motherfucker’s particular brand of animosity pushed Jon directly in some Freudian button he didn’t understand…

Jon twisted off the water and slid down into the tub, sat there until the porcelain got cold, and then sat there some more. He had waited and prayed for this time when they’d be together again, touring, and validating themselves as musicians again. He had worked his ass off for it. He’d have traded his soul for it.

But no matter how many times he had pulled the damn little piece of paper out of his wallet and threatened its edges with his lighter, he still couldn’t bring himself to destroy it.


	4. Trash, Pt. 1

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He and Richie had made a tentative peace with the existence of the memory. There was no amount of fucking that was gonna take it out of either of their minds, both of them knew that, but eventually, after a month or so, maybe more, Axl Rose was no longer the ghost in the room, haunting the space between them. It was done, Jon thought.
> 
> Then the phone in his suite had rung.

** _June, 1993_ **

Jon closed his eyes, trying to shut out the sight before him. His heart and arteries pounded chaotic blood up into his head, making him feel like his feet were lifting from the carpet, or like his face would be planted in the plush ivory pile. 

After the flowers had been sent, and Richie had found out about his indiscretion with Axl-- and after there had been the repeat indiscretion, though of a lesser caliber, at least, though Richie had never been told about that one-- Jon had informed everyone who had ears that there were to be no more flowers sent to his suite for the foreseeable future. No surprise gifts of any kind. Nothing. And it had been quiet, at least on that front. 

He and Richie had made a tentative peace with the existence of the memory. There was no amount of fucking that was gonna take it out of either of their minds, both of them knew that, but eventually, after a month or so, maybe more, Axl Rose was no longer the ghost in the room, haunting the space between them. It was done, Jon thought.

Then the phone in his suite had rung. It was Richie telling him he wanted to see him right away. He had a surprise for him.

When Jon had let himself into the front door of Richie’s suite, he had found his best friend standing in the middle of the living room, his head tilted to one side, as though pondering something lightly. He even had his lip puckered and drawn to one side. Next to him was a tremendous, lavish bouquet of those heinous red and black roses. And so Jon had likewise found himself here, eyes closed, blood pressure threatening to detonate him. 

“I didn’t read the card yet. Saved it for you,” Richie said. His voice was not light. 

Jon forced his eyes open. “I’m sorry,” he said. “About all of this.”

Nodding, Richie snatched the card out from the middle of the flowers and handed it to Jon. “Read it for the class.”

Jon almost lost the little envelope as he attempted to open it, his hands shook so hard. The gears in his mind flew into a flurry of desperate action, how to spin this, whatever it was, whatever this crazy bastard might have written, there had to be a way to spin it so it wasn’t Jon’s fault, so that Axl was just messing around, at least here and now, so that Jon could have some time to figure out a way to--

“Read it.”

Jon was not surprised at the croak his voice had become: “_Had a great time catching up. Call me again soon. A._”

Richie took the card from him and read it himself. For probably five straight minutes, Richie reread that card for himself while Jon stood there watching him do it, and waiting for the pressure in his veins to kill him. 

Finally, he put the galling little square of stationery down. “I don’t gotta ask, do I?”

“Can we sit down?” Jon whispered. 

Richie sighed. “Why not?”

He circled the end of the couch and sank into its thick white cushions, the back of his head square in front of the crystal vase. It took Jon a moment before enough feeling returned to his feet to allow him to join the other man where he sat, and even then, he still wasn’t quite sure he was grounded in his body yet. He said nothing. He wanted to say something. Anything. 

But Richie spoke. “Is he lying?”

Jon felt the bitter sting of tears starting to move along his eyelids. “No… but I swear to god it’s not why I called him.”

“Not why-- _you_ called him--”

“Rich--”

“What the fuck is going on, Jonny? I deserve to know what the fuck is going on. Don’t I? Don’t I deserve that much?”

“Yes!”

“Then fucking tell me! Please. Because this--” Richie twisted in his seat and delivered a right cross to the vase so hard Jon heard the very specific _clung_ of the man’s knuckles off the thick glass, and the vase pitched ten feet away into the carpet, spraying water and flowers. “--is _not_ working for me.”

“I called him,” Jon sobbed, “that night, to ask why the fuck he did it.”

“And you couldn’ta just ignored it?” Richie’s voice was high and exasperated and, if Jon wasn’t mistaken, right on the verge of tears himself.

“I don’t know.”

“And then what, you phone-fucked?”

“He said some things… and I…”

“Jesus, Jon,” Richie said. “I thought it was nothing. You said it was fucking nothing, and I fucking believed you.”

“Richie--” 

“What do you want?”

“What do you mean?”

“Do you even want to be with me?”

“I’m with you now, I’ve _been_ with you--”

“You _have_ to be with me, don’t you? Proximity and all that, right?”

“I wanna be with you.”

“You got a funny way of showing it.”

“It was a mistake--”

“It was _two_ mistakes, and fucking counting.”

A mental image of the scrap of paper in his wallet appeared on the screen of Jon’s mind, and he spent a moment, maybe a few, attempting to ignore it. Attempting to pretend that Richie wasn’t right, that he wasn’t just marking days until the next time Axl got under his skin in just such a way as to light him on fire. Almost on autopilot, his body moving without explicit consent from his brain, Jon reached beneath himself and pulled the wallet from his back pocket. 

“Here,” he said, flipping the thing open and extracting the phone number. “Destroy it.”

Richie stared at the proffered slip of paper. “You’re carrying it around with you?”

“Destroy it.”

“I don’t want to destroy it,” Richie said. “I want _you_ to destroy it. When you’re good and ready to stop using it.”

Balling the paper up in his fist, Jon’s head sank, and he allowed himself to bawl. There was no fucking escape.

To his shock, when Richie spoke again, he no longer seemed quite as full of rage.

“What does he do for you that I don’t?”

“I don’t know.”

“Yes you do.”

Jon let his fingers loosen and stared down into that handwriting, that reminder that he kept with him of that night when he had been someone else. He had still been the same Jon Bon Jovi that mothers approved of when compared with more or less any of their contemporaries-- it was part of what Axl had hated about him, wasn’t it?-- but he had been someone else, too. He had been a drunken idiot, taking someone up on their bullshit, fighting in a hotel room, screwing the most unlikely person he possibly could, and knowing full well it would start all kinds of shit in his life. 

He had been a fucking piece of trash, thoroughly and gloriously, for maybe the first time in his life, and he had loved every second of it.

“Tell me,” Richie said.

“He’s dirty,” Jon said, crumbling the paper again. “And so am I when I’m around him.”

Richie’s head fell back against the poof of the couch top, and he began laughing. “You’re shitting me, right?”

The confusion of it landed like a thick blanket over Jon. It had taken him a year and a half to understand what it was about Axl Rose that could creep up his spine and dance at the base of his skull like teasing fingertips, and Richie was… unconvinced?

“What the hell? What do you mean, am I shitting you?”

Richie snapped his head up. “All this time, you’re spending all this energy making _me_ toe the line, and _you’re_ the skank?”

“Hey!”

“You shoulda told me sooner,” Richie said, standing and strolling over to where the vase lay, still intact, on the safety of the thick carpet pile. He picked it up, dumping the remainder of the water and flowers out onto the floor. “You’re a fucking altar boy compared to me.”

He wound up and pitched the vase at the wall like a fastball, where it shattered into a hundred thousand shards that rained out in a twenty foot radius. Jon jumped and scrambled back into the far end of the sofa, away from the explosion. 

“The fuck are you doing!”

“Trashing a hotel room,” Richie said. “I’m just getting started, too.” He turned and nailed Jon with a glare so intense Jon felt it physically. “Keep that number, though. We’re gonna need it soon.” He thought for a moment and added, “And let’s get Jack up here while we’re at it, huh?”

Then he smiled a slow-opening, wicked sort of smile. And Jon smiled back.


	5. Trash, Pt. 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Give it some thought, okay?” Jon groaned, and then couldn’t catch his breath long enough to rub two words together for a full thirty seconds. Finally, he added, “He’s so good, we’d have a hell of a time…”

Jon had always heard that the bitterness was the best part. 

It was always people who were a lot more experienced than he was who said it. That unambiguous bittersweetness that was unlike anything else, leaking from your sinuses down the back of your throat. The drip was the best part, they said.

But Jon was unconvinced. Jon liked the burn of it going up his nostrils on the first go-round of the night, and the sting of it melting into the mucous membranes. A burst of his eyes watering, and the almost palpable pause before the headrush kicked in. 

Jon liked the anticipation.

He watched Richie do two lines of it, then throw his head back and rub at the underside of his nose. “Wow,” he said, laughing. “That’s good shit.”

Jon took a pull off his beer. “Did you have any doubt?”

“Nope,” Richie said, cutting up and separating out the next few lines. “That’s why we call Jack, ain’t it?”

Jon popped the bottle from his lips and tipped it up and out in a toast gesture before swigging from it again. It had been awhile since either he or Richie had availed themselves of Jack’s services. At least in that way. The guy was one of their security posse, had been for years. He was good at his job, knew the ropes and how to handle or defuse any situation. He also always knew where to find anything the band members wanted or needed, no matter where they were in the world. The man had connections in every major city on Earth, it seemed, and if he didn’t, he could make the needed connections within three phone calls or less. 

He was professional and discreet. He procured top notch substances, and/or women, if that’s what the night called for. He also knew how to smooth out the kinks of said interesting nights. The bad kinks anyway. Bon Jovi wasn’t like other bands that got nabbed for possession, and vulgar shit like that. Bon Jovi were… 

“Classy skanks,” Jon mused out loud to himself, and then started laughing.

Richie crinkled his eyebrows. “The fuck you talking about?”

Shaking his head, Jon stood up and pulled his shirt up and off. “Nothing,” he said. “You gonna fuck me, or what?”

“Mm. I like the sound of that,” Richie said, sliding an arm around Jon’s waist and yanking him in close. His cock was hard already, pressed against Jon’s hip. “But I’m just getting started.”

“If you give yourself coke-dick before you even get it in me, I’ll garrote you with a coat hanger.”

“_Oohh, feisty,”_ Richie teased. “You need it that bad, you little slut? I’ll have you know, it takes a _lot_ of cocaine to make my dick limp.”

“I remember.”

“You owe me.”

“Owe you what?”

The corners of Richie’s mouth curled up into a fiendish grin as he plucked at the fastenings of Jon’s pants. “Tell me what happened in that phone call.”

The searing excitement that had started in Jon’s head with that initial cocaine rush, and that had quickly settled hard in his pelvis like a molten lava rock, was bizarrely untouched by the chill that rushed through him. His skin broke out in goosebumps and his brain whirled. 

“Why?” he said, because he couldn’t think of anything flirtatious to say. 

“Because I wanna know what he said. I wanna know what makes you feel dirty.” Richie reached into Jon’s pants and squeezed his cock. Jon’s knees buckled. 

“Did you jerk yourself when he was talking to you?”

“Yes.”

“What did he say that made you cave?”

Richie’s fingers were crawling through the flyhole of Jon’s underwear, rubbing the underside of his dick, slowly, methodically.

“He-- he said he wanted to mouth-fuck me. Oh god, that feels good…”

Richie clicked his tongue. “That’s it?” he said, pinching the head of Jon’s cock between his thumb and forefinger and massaging it hard enough to hurt just a little. Just enough to make Jon gasp and grab for his shoulders. 

“I don’t believe that,” Richie went on. “I’ve said dirtier things to you before I even had a coffee in the morning, and it didn’t make you bang yourself.”

“Oh god-- Rich--”

“What else did he say?”

“That’s it. I-- I don’t know, I don’t remember--”

“Yes you do. Tell me.”

“I can’t--”

Richie squeezed down hard for a moment, drawing a yelp from Jon. “If it’s something about me, I wanna know.”

“Oh god--”

“Jonny.”

“He said he and I were the same,” Jon panted, his body wilting as Richie pulled his dick free from its confines and started massaging the head of it again. “He said you didn’t know what it was like, that you had it good all your life, and there’s more stress on the front guy, and then he was talking about mouth-fucking me, and I don’t know, I just saw stars, oh god, don’t stop--”

“You believed him?”

“No-- I don’t know-- he’s an asshole, oh god, he was being an asshole, and I knew it, I’m gonna come--”

Richie leaned close and put his mouth to Jon’s ear so that his breath fell damp on the skin. “I wanna watch it.”

“What?”

“I wanna watch him suck you off. I wanna watch him get on his knees for you, and then I wanna ball-gag him and fuck him til he bleeds.”

The orgasm descended hard and furious on Jon’s groin, and it felt like he was being turned inside out as he came on the carpet. Richie held his wet fingers up to Jon’s lips, and Jon obediently licked them clean. 

“You have a phone call to make,” Richie said. “Then I’ll see about fucking you. If you’re good.”

\----------------------------------------

Axl was barely out of the shower when a bellhop came to his door with a message from the front desk. Someone named “Jay” wanted a return phone call, as soon as was convenient, in order to “catch up”. Axl shut the door in the expectant bellhop’s face, barely catching his towel before it hit the floor, and then immediately felt guilty. He opened the door back up and said, “Wait a minute.”

He fished some cash out of last night’s pants and shoved it out the cracked door into the boy’s hand. He had no idea how much was there, but the kid sure as hell lit up. Good, that was taken care of. Who the hell was “Jay”?

Letting the towel drop on his way back to the bedroom, Axl belly-flopped on the bed and stared at the handwriting on the message, trying to decipher any hidden clues it contained. He wasn’t about to return a phone call to someone he didn’t--

Fuck. Not “Jay”. “J”. As in “Jon”.

Ah, this was gonna be fun. He’d sent the flowers to the fuckhead Sambora’s room, just to see what would happen. Apparently, they had been received. Whether or not they had been received well was a different story. Axl picked up the phone.

Jon Bon Jovi was out of breath when he got on the line. “Hello?” he panted.

“You been out running a marathon or what?”

“Axl?”

“No, it’s fucking Jesus Christ. I want to save your soul.”

“Let me eat and drink you then.”

Axl laughed. “Oh! That was good. You’re a terrible person. Why are you so out of breath? Or do I wanna know?”

A deeper voice that sent a thrill of adrenaline through Axl’s body crackled down the line. “I’m fucking him, Rose. Like he did to you.”

“Oohhh, Sambora, you piece of shit. How are you?”

“Balls-deep in the guy you can’t seem to let go. How are you?”

“Oh, you know. Fair. Why’d your boy call me?”

A scuffling of the receiver being passed, maybe dropped and righted, and then Jon Bon Jovi’s ass-fucked panting coming down the wire again.

“I wanna see you again,” Jon said.

“Fuck off,” Axl said, but his dick was very interested. He shifted his body to make a little extra room for it.

“I do-- ah! God! I do--”

“Why?”

“We have unfinished business. And--” His words trailed off into a moan that sent fingers of pleasure slithering all over Axl’s body. 

“What about your dickhead there that’s fucking you? What’s he think about this?”

“He wants in on it.”

“I’m hanging up now.”

“I’m serious. Oh!”

“Me too.”

“C’mon, it’ll be fun. I know you wanna see me again.”

“You, not your boyfriend.”

“Give it some thought, okay?” Jon groaned, and then couldn’t catch his breath long enough to rub two words together for a full thirty seconds. Finally, he added, “He’s so good, we’d have a hell of a time…”

“Fine,” Axl said, doing his best to ignore the absolute meltdown happening in his groin. 

“Don’t think too long,” Jon said. “I want your cock again.”

Any potential response fell silent in Axl’s throat, and he just laid there, listening to Jon Bon Jovi’s pants and groans and whiny little moans for more and more of Sambora’s dick in his ass, and Axl knew it was a bad decision, a setup of some kind, they were up to something, probably, but he also knew just as positively that he was gonna take them up on the offer.

What was one more garbage decision in a lifetime full of them?


	6. Devils

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Richie rose to standing, his eyes boring holes directly into Axl’s innards, and for a second, Axl braced for an attack. But the other man instead turned to Jon and wrapped a hand around his throat, his thumb and forefinger bracketed beneath the sides of his jawbones, and pulled him to his feet. Axl resisted an urge to scramble backward on the sofa, as far away from the spectacle as possible, but he couldn’t look away.

Axl sat in one of the wing chairs that occupied the living room of his suite, the worn-out jeans and torn tee-shirt he wore an offense to the cream silk brocade of the upholstery. His whole existence was an offense to silk things, and gold things, and places with chandeliers and good wine, and clean carpet. 

He twisted the bottle of Valium in his hand and read the label for the thousandth time. There were directions on it, about how much to take, and how often, but it was for show; the doctor didn’t ask any questions about refilling it whenever Axl wanted. His habit was legal. As was the Jim Beam he had three full bottles of, waiting. He didn’t know what Jon liked to drink. He thought the man had been drinking tequila in the bar the night they’d met, but he couldn’t remember now. And he didn’t know if it was Jon’s drink of choice, or if it had been a passing whim. He had no idea whatsoever about the dickhead Sambora’s preferences. Axl had figured they could order up their own shit when they got there, but suddenly he wished he had everything ready. To show he could be as sophisticated as the wing chairs and the fucking fainting couch, or whatever that thing was by the door. To have that bit of power over them-- my suite, my booze, my rules.

Who was he kidding? His rules? He had no fucking clue what he was in for tonight. At best, he figured, they weren’t gonna show at all. Haha, stand him up for a three-way. But then how would they know Axl hadn’t been planning on standing _them_ up? He shrugged, even though there was no one there to see it. 

He didn’t know what the worst-case scenario was. He had spent the entire day running various horrific scenes through his head, and he still couldn’t settle on what the worst possible conclusion to the night’s festivities could be. There was a good one where all three of them were struck impotent, but Axl decided that would probably be worse for the other two than it would be for him. His own sense of humor was mighty fucked up.

There was one that made his skin crawl, where he had actually gone at it with that blithering fuckhead, and had lost his inhibitions and expressed his enjoyment, and then the fuckhead stopped short. Axl decided that he would not-- could not-- express enjoyment at the mercy of Richie Sambora. Or if he did, it had to be calculated. Everything calculated. Everything… his way.

Two against one, his ass. He could do this shit standing on his head. But he decided to pop a Valium just in case. Maybe three.

Or maybe however many fell into his palm when he shook the bottle. Fuck it. 

A knock on the door startled him mid-swallow, and he spit some of his water on the carpet, but the pills went down. 

There were two security personnel at the door of his suite when he opened it, flanking the two visitors. So they weren’t gonna stand him up, at least. Bon Jovi looked like he had already tied one (or six) on. Sambora’s stare was laser-sharp under the haze of his messy, unsprayed bangs. Shit.

Axl waved them in and dismissed the security. He had barely closed the door when Jon started chuckling and motioning to the wall near the doorframe.

“Remember when I choked you out?” he said. “Your eyes were _huge_\--”

“Remember when you sucked my dick and told me I won?” Axl said, staring Richie in the eyes as he said it.

To his surprise, the asshole smiled at him. “You have a really hard time controlling what comes out of your mouth, don’t you?”

“Not at all, brother. People just don’t like what they hear. Ain’t my problem.”

“What about what goes _in_ your mouth?”

Axl grinned in return, a genuine grin. “Why? You wanna try me?”

Jon pushed his way between them, a palm on each of their chests, and until that moment, Axl hadn’t realized how close he and Sambora were standing to each other. Rolling his head between the two of them and fixing each of them with a look that was supposed to be equivalent of a chastising eyeroll, but just came off… well, drunk… he said, 

“C’mon. No fighting.”

With that, he strolled across the living room, and dropped into the sofa. Axl watched him until he was safely off his feet, then turned back to Richie. 

“How the hell much has he had to drink already?”

“A fucking lot.”

“Is he-- I mean… Is he good to go?” Axl said, then, realizing how that sounded, added, “You know what I mean. Can he look out for himself?”

“That’s what he has me for.”

He knew Richie was purposely misinterpreting his words, but all the same, Axl felt the pinkness of anger and embarrassment flood his face.

“That’s not what I meant, you cunt.”

“He’s fine,” Richie said. “He’s exploring his inner white trash. He wants to be more like you.”

Axl straightened up to the fullness of his height. He wasn’t as tall as the fuckhead, but he had a hell of a lot of mass on him. Leaning in close, he said, “You talk big for being the fifth wheel here.”

And then he watched the lingering remnants of the smile melt from Sambora’s lips with a delight so thorough it almost gave him a hard-on. Before the fuckhead could respond, Axl turned and followed Jon to the couch, where he collapsed onto the sofa next to the other man, and put an arm around him. 

“I was hoping I’d get to see you again,” he whispered into Jon’s ear, before putting a soft kiss at the corner of his jaw.

Jon turned to him, his eyes heavy-lidded, not just with alcohol, but with what was unmistakably desire. “I kept thinking about it,” he said, softly, his breath strong with booze. “I couldn’t stop thinking about it.”

Fighting an intense urge to glance up at Richie, who had not yet moved from his spot by the door, Axl laid a hand on Jon’s thigh and put his mouth close to his ear again. “I wanna taste you all over.”

He felt a shiver run through Jon’s body and, out of the corner of his eye, he saw Sambora finally start walking. The man sat in the same wing chair that Axl had been contemplating his Valium in. In fact, Axl had left the bottle on the table next to the chair, and Sambora, stretched comfortably out, like he owned the place, picked up the bottle and read it. 

“You relaxed, Rose?” he said.

“Yeah,” Axl said, internally berating himself for not thinking to put the fucking meds away. “You?”

“Oh, I’m getting there. Might need some help.”

“You’re welcome to the pills,” Axl said. “I got some Jim Beam up here too, or you can order up whatever you want.”

“That’s not what I meant.”

Jon suddenly gasped, a huge smile covering his face, like he had had the most fantastic idea in the world, and Axl’s stomach dropped a little bit. The guy was too drunk to be the one in charge, but he was the neutralest party of the bunch. Sort of.

“I wanna see you guys kiss,” he said.

Both Axl and Richie started grumbling half-formed protestations at the same time, and Jon popped up from the sofa, stumbled over to where Richie sat, and pulled on his hand.

“C’mon,” he said, “take my spot.”

“I don’t know, baby,” Richie said. “Maybe it’s too early in the night.”

“Bullshit,” Jon said, now pulling on Richie’s hand with both of his own. 

“All right, all right, let go of me. You’re gonna break my fucking wrist,” Richie said, and Jon obliged. Richie stole a quick look at Axl, who said,

“Seriously, the pills help.”

Sighing, Richie picked up the bottle and tapped one out. “Where’s that fucking bourbon?” he asked, before dry-swallowing the tablet. 

Axl got up and retrieved one of the bottles, along with two glasses, and returned to the couch. After pouring, he handed one to Richie, and downed the other himself. 

Jon pouted. “Where’s mine?” He was currently sitting on the floor in front of the empty wing chair.

“Give us a minute to catch up, Betty Ford,” Axl said, and to his minor shock, Richie started laughing.

Jon narrowed his eyes as menacingly as his condition would allow. “Fine. Hurry it up, though.”

Within only a minute or two, Axl felt the sweet salving of the bourbon mixing with the half-digested Valium. He waited for the telltale softening in Sambora’s eyes and posture, while they sat and drank, and listened to Jon talk about the tits on the brunette bartender who had kept his glass full down in the hotel bar, and how much he had wanted to sink his face between them, and do you think she would let him? 

Richie idly swirled his third helping of Jim Beam in the glass, his long legs stretched out and crossed at the ankle. The guy had some of the longest thighs Axl had ever seen on a man, next to Izzy, and he was probably a full minute into contemplating them when he caught himself. When he raised his gaze, Richie was looking at him. 

“See something you like?” he said, interrupting Jon mid-sentence.

A jolt of anger hit Axl square in the lizard part of his brain, tightened up his throat and attempted to dictate his words. And there was that other instinct there layered on top of it, to say something caustic, just because he could, just because he was good at it. But instead he just said, 

“Yeah. Is that a problem?”

Richie gave a soft snort of a laugh, and put his glass down on the side table. Then he unfurled those long legs of his, and slid over to the couch in almost one continuous motion. 

Axl fought the impulse to move away from him when he sat down. He was warm, and smelled of something expensive-- cedar and sandalwood and sex. A tingle bloomed between Axl’s legs that probably had more to do with the bourbon and pills than with the smell of Sambora’s skin, but it felt good anyway. The feel of Jon’s excited eyes on them prickled the hair on Axl’s arms, and on the back of his neck. He wasn’t a stranger to having an audience (though he vastly preferred not having one). But this was so far removed from anything he had ever participated in before, he wasn’t entirely sure how to even classify it.

“You wanna flip a coin to see who has to make the first move?” Sambora said.

“You don’t have the balls,” Axl replied, and slid his hand up the back of Richie’s head, pulling his face into a hard kiss. 

The fuckhead’s lips were soft-- too soft-- but commanding. He was used to being in charge, used to dominating his conquests, whether by brute masculinity or by cunning seduction. This bastard came to win, and he had probably left a trail of wet panties on his way over, like breadcrumbs, so he could find his way back.

Fuck this guy.

Suppressing the urge to moan right into Richie Sambora’s mouth, Axl plunged his tongue in there instead. Richie met him with his own, tracing the curves of Axl’s tongue and lips and back to his tongue. He felt Richie’s hands climb up into the back of his hair, pulling on it slightly as the pressure of the kiss deepened, and he knew Sambora was trying to get him to lie back, trying to climb on top of him.

Every nerve in Axl’s body was screaming at him to let it happen. To let himself be led down into the soft cushions, and wrap himself around this guy’s body. Let him do whatever he wants to do. 

But instead he pushed him away and took a breath. Richie’s lips were swollen and pink and his voice sounded like he’d just screamed the blues for a couple hours and then smoked a carton of Marlboros.

“You’re pretty when you’re not talking.”

“Fuck you,” Axl said.

“And you think you’re a hothead, but you’ve never had to deal with Jonny when he thinks he had a bad show. I know how to handle self-absorbed bullshit.”

Ignoring Jon’s _hey!_ from somewhere slightly behind him, Axl said, “Is that why you left him? Because you know him so well. You don’t know shit.”

“You talking to me, or your own guitarist?”

Before the upper part of his brain could stop him, Axl watched his hands dart out and grab the dickhead by the shirt, twisting hard into the fabric to get a good grip on him. “Izzy’s off-limits,” he snarled, and shockingly, Richie didn’t attempt to free himself from the grasp. 

Instead, he laid his hands on Axl’s forearms, rubbing them for a moment until the muscles in them loosened. “Yeah, okay,” he said. “Fine.”

“You know what? Fuck this,” Axl said, shoving Sambora away as he let go of him. “I ain’t interested anymore.”

Richie bent forward toward the coffee table, where Axl’s empty glass and the now half-empty bottle of bourbon stood, and poured. Handing it back to Axl, he said, “Have another drink.” 

“I don’t want another drink, fucker,” Axl said, but he took it anyway.

“I know, you wanna throat punch me.”

“Yeah.”

“I’d rather you drink. I use this throat. For a lot of things.”

“Asshole.”

“Pipsqueak.”

“_Pipsqueak?_ Motherfucker, I could bench-press you--”

Axl hadn’t noticed that Jon had taken a seat on the coffee table in front of them, until the guy was pulling the untouched drink from his hand.

“How ‘bout you both shut the hell up and start eating faces again. Tha’s what I wanna see.” He downed Axl’s drink and clinked the glass down next to himself. “Show me somethin’ I can beat off to for the next coupla years.”

Axl closed his eyes and sighed. “Who invited this guy?”

“You, with your fucking flowers.”

Opening his eyes, Axl gave a huge, vindictive grin. “Oh yeah. I almost forgot.”

Richie gave another one of those soft snorting laughs and said, “You got nothing on me. I promise you.”

“Is that right?”

“Yep.”

“Yeah, well. My dick hasn’t moved a fucking millimeter yet. Maybe Jonny here’s an easier lay.”

The muscles in Richie’s jaw tensed, and Axl was ninety-nine percent sure it was his use of the name _Jonny_ that caused it. 

_jackpot_

Jon exhaled melodramatically. “This is getting boring. Think I’m gonna go find that brunette again.”

Richie rose to standing, his eyes boring holes directly into Axl’s innards, and for a second, Axl braced for an attack. But the other man instead turned to Jon and wrapped a hand around his throat, his thumb and forefinger bracketed beneath the sides of his jawbones, and pulled him to his feet. Axl resisted an urge to scramble backward on the sofa, as far away from the spectacle as possible, but he couldn’t look away. 

Jon’s eyelids had gone half-mast, his mouth cocked into a Mona Lisa smile that opened on cue to permit Richie’s tongue into it. 

A surge of blood pounded into Axl’s cock so hard it took his breath. What the fucking _fuck_ was _that?_

When Richie decided to end the kiss, he ran his hand down the side of Jon’s neck, still holding on, still _owning_, and then glanced back at Axl.

“Suck him off,” he told Jon. “And finish it this time.”

With that, he strolled away and took a seat again in the wing chair, his long legs spread this time, taking up space.

Jon sank to his knees in front of Axl. “How do you want it?” he said, looking upward through his eyelashes, the way a girl might, his fingers already halfway through the fastenings of Axl’s jeans. 

“Um… I don’t know…” Axl said, hearing the breathless confusion in his own voice, and then made the mistake of looking up at Richie.

The dickhead was smiling.

Axl’s mind was reeling when he felt the familiar wet heat of Jon’s mouth sinking onto his cock, and all the building thoughts popped like a soap bubble and disappeared. 

Jesus _Christ,_ Jon Bon Jovi gave incredible head.

“Fuck,” Axl groaned. “Slow down, I can’t… I can’t--” 

“Nn-unh,” Jon murmured, and the vibration of it went straight from his throat down the tip of Axl’s dick.

“Don’t fight it, Rose,” Richie said, sounding like he was a hundred thousand miles away. 

Axl dropped his head back against the cushion of the couch and managed to flip the guy a weak bird before clutching the back of Jon’s head with the other hand. Jon moaned like he, himself, was getting off from it. Fucking Deep Throat.

Richie stood again and strolled, painfully slow, around the back of the couch. Axl attempted to keep an eye on him, but Jon was doing some supernatural thing with his tongue, and Axl lost track of Richie until he was right behind him, hands on his shoulders, and lips against his ear. 

“You should come now,” he whispered.

“Wh-- what?” Axl whimpered, writhing under Jon’s expert mouth.

“You’re fighting it.”

“I don’t--”

“He’s very thirsty,” Richie breathed, and then brushed his lips down the length of Axl’s neck, down to the curve where his neck met his shoulder, and bit him.

Axl cried out at the assault, and made a move to push him away, but his arm had gone weak, and he ended up just grabbing the man’s hair instead with his free hand. Let the man’s mouth roam over the tightened muscles of his neck, scraping teeth over his skin. Clenching his eyelids shut, Axl focused on his breath, and on keeping his body still, grounded, so he wouldn’t push himself up harder, faster against the back of Jon’s eager throat.

Richie’s hands were still on his shoulders, but now pushing him back into the cushions of the couch, forcing him into place, and the man’s lips were claiming Axl’s own, taking his breath into another deep kiss. Richie’s tongue fluttered in the same rhythm as Jon’s, and Axl gasped hard against it as he burst into Jon’s mouth. 

Popping his lips free, Richie ran the tip of his tongue over them for a moment, savoring them, then said, “You taste good when you come.”

“Fuck off,” Axl said, but his own mouth betrayed his words by smiling a little. He gasped again, softly this time, when he felt Sambora’s fingers dig into the hardened muscles of his shoulders, massaging the places he was tense, as though intuition guided him to every kink and knot. He was just starting to relax when he felt the man’s breath next to his ear again.

“Jonny says you wanted to mouth-fuck him. I wanna watch.”

“Okay.”

“I want you both naked.”

A spike of… _something_… went through Axl, and he responded, “Not unless you are, too.”

Sambora laughed, softly, from somewhere down in his throat, and said, “Yeah, okay. Sure.”

The combination of his hands, still working away at the rigid muscles, and the Valium and Beam working their way more thoroughly into his bloodstream, made Axl feel a little like he was drifting from his body. 

“Fuck, you’re good at that,” he murmured, both hating himself for giving the fuckhead credit for something, and also proud of himself for being able to live in the moment. 

“Why do you think Jonny here keeps me around?” Richie said. “Well, this and… a few other things. But we got the whole night to get down to that, right?”

“Motherfucker, if you think you’re doing _that_ to me--”

“You’re gonna want it.”

Snorting, Axl said, “Christ, you got a high opinion of yourself.”

Jon stood up before him and reached down for his hand. Without thinking, Axl took it, and Jon pulled him to his feet, straight into a deep kiss that tasted of bourbon and sex. 

“He’ll make you believe in god again,” he mumbled against Axl’s lips. “And you owe me a blowjob, you fucking cock tease.”

Axl wiggled his hand free from the other man’s, and moved it up behind his neck, drawing him in for a slower, searching kiss, that made Axl’s leisurely deflating dick hard again. He slipped the other hand down the back of Jon’s pants. 

The cold appraisal of Richie’s gaze on him tingled Axl’s skin. Another raw nerve, huh? Good. Jon seemed to like it just fine.

Axl deftly spread the man’s ass cheeks a little, with his first and third fingers, just enough to slide his middle finger down between them and find the velvety puckers of skin there. Jon moaned softly into the kiss. 

“You’re bad,” he whispered, his lips stretching into a smile against Axl’s exploring tongue. Then, a little louder, “He’s being bad, Rich.”

“I know,” Sambora’s voice purred, from somewhere closer to them than Axl was aware he had gotten. “I’m keeping score.”

When Axl turned to look at him, he was so close, a little tilt of the head, and lean of the body could have turned into any combination of kisses and partners. 

Axl thought about it.

Instead he said, “And then what?”

Sambora reached down and took hold of Axl’s cock, still hanging out of his pants, semi-hard from the feel of Jon’s tongue against his, and stroked it. Axl drew a hard breath through his teeth-- it was still so sensitive, and he was damned if he was gonna tell this asshole to slow down. But he didn’t have to. Richie teased and plucked at the skin of his dick, then his balls, as though he was feeling out a new and rare instrument. 

Axl’s hand went still against Jon’s ass, as he forgot what the hell he was doing.

And then Richie leaned in to kiss Jon, and when their lips and tongues met, it was hot and familiar, but spiked with an urgency--

Axl pushed his fingertip into Jon’s asshole. It was tight, so tight, and dry, and he knew it probably hurt, but oh god, Jon’s head fell back for Richie to lick his throat, and he was pushing against Axl’s hand. Axl thought he would come again, but Richie suddenly pushed both of them away. 

“Get in the fucking bed, both of you.”

An increasingly tiny part of Axl tried to resist, tried to demand who the hell this guy thought he was, tried to get Axl to voice that very question. But the majority of him was already being pulled toward the master bedroom by a grinning Jon Bon Jovi, and could feel Sambora so close behind him as to feel his body heat, and wanting to turn around and let the guy do whatever he wanted to do.

_fuuuuuck. resist! resist!_

As soon as he was through the bedroom door, Jon stripped his shirt off and tossed it on the floor. He pulled his shoes off as he walked backwards, hopping on each foot in turn, until he was able to toss those aside as well. Axl stopped on the spot and watched as the man paused next to the bed and undid his pants, pushing them down and crushing them beneath his feet. He was wearing no underwear and his pretty cock was already swollen and ready.

Axl stripped himself, watching Jon sprawl himself out on the bed, his legs open, and it wasn’t until Axl had climbed into the bed with him that he remembered Sambora was watching them. He turned around.

“You gotta get naked too, remember?”

Richie smirked. “Yeah, yeah,” he said. 

Axl watched the man remove his clothes, feeling it both in his dick and in his gut-- Sambora was long and lean, bordering on lanky, just like Izzy. But he had a luminosity to his skin, maybe good genes, but probably just plain good health, that Axl hadn’t seen on Izzy since high school. Well, actually, Izzy probably had the spark of life back in him now, the glow in the skin and the muscles filled out a little, making him appear more human and less impending corpse, but Axl didn’t know, because he hadn’t seen Izzy in awhile. 

_fuck Izzy, he’s gone_

Approaching the bed, Sambora scooped Axl’s jaw up in his hand, tilted his face up. Axl’s chin was almost touching the man’s stomach, and his mind whirred, did a funny thing where he almost wanted to--

_do it_

“You’re even prettier when you’re naked,” Richie said. “I like that.”

_why the fuck not_

Axl sank his lips around Richie’s cock. 

The man’s breath came out of him, and his body shrank back a little, as though he’d received a blow to the abdomen. In his peripheral vision, Axl saw Jon raise slowly up onto his knees, before crawling closer.

“_Fuck…”_ Jon said, watching, with what Axl knew was that glazed and goofy awe that only drunk people and kids can achieve. 

Axl pulled his lips off and did his best to level a seductive look at the man while he slid a fist up and down the length of Sambora’s dick. “You _are_ a little whore, aren’t you?”

Jon lowered his eyelids. “You have no idea.”

Sambora’s hand closed around Axl’s jaw again, brought his face up to look at him again. “Much as I love what you’re doing, you owe Jonny first.”

Axl grinned. “Scared?”

The pads of Richie’s fingers squeezed in so hard on Axl’s jawbones that, for a moment, Axl thought the man’s callouses would tear his skin.

“Yeah,” Richie said, and let go.

Axl made an attempt to catch the his eyes, to decipher the answer he’d spoken, but Sambora had turned away already. Axl wasn’t even sure what he, himself, had meant by the provocation; it just felt like the perfect dig at the perfect moment. And apparently it was, at least by Richie Sambora’s reckoning. 

The tingle of power lit up Axl’s skin, and he twisted himself around to face Jon. The man was still wearing the half-lidded look, his lips parted in a dirty smirk. 

“I thought you forgot about me,” Jon said.

“I’m just warming up for you, angel.”

Still wearing the insolent half-smile that Axl felt clear down into his balls, Jon scooted himself back into the pillows again and laid down. This time he kept his legs closed, meekly pressed together and laid to one side, begging for the challenge of being torn open and devoured.

This guy was masterclass. No wonder Sambora was so possessive. 

Axl momentarily wondered what it would be like to watch them fuck, just the two of them, in their cocoon of mutual devotion.

And then he descended on Jon Bon Jovi with a vengeance. 

The man made a whimpering noise when Axl pried his knees open, and Axl knew the noise was at least half put-on, a show of innocence and surprise, the way groupies sometimes did, and even though Axl knew it was bullshit, it did something to him every time. 

He pushed Jon’s knees up to his chest and buried his face in his ass. 

Jon gasped with what may have been real surprise, but was probably fake as well. “_Devil,”_ he accused, even as he grasped Axl’s hair and rocked his body into the attack. 

Axl felt the presence of Richie looming behind him, hot and intense, and for a second, he braced for a blow, or at least to be yanked backward by the hair or the throat. But instead, he felt the gentle pressure of a palm against the little curve where his neck met his upper back, and with that, Sambora was rubbing him, feeling the turns and arches of his back, sliding his hands over the muscles, working his way downward. His hands were so covetous in that moment, so domineering, they felt twice the size of a normal man’s hands, large enough to encompass Axl’s waist, if they so wished--

\-- or to kill him with a well-placed squeeze--

Axl was almost daunted. He almost pulled his lips away from the treasure that was currently driving Sambora insane (and had no doubt been driving the guy insane for years). But he remained. If he was going to end up a bloody mass of flesh and pain courtesy of Sambora’s rage-crazy fists at the end of the night, he was going to make it worth his while. He was gonna stay an indelible scar on both their memories until they died. 

A moan from Jon sent Richie’s hand sliding over Axl’s ass, his fingers rubbing without reservation into places so few had ever had access to. Axl swatted at his hand, grabbed his wrist. 

Low laughter met his efforts. “Scared?” Sambora asked.

“Fuck off,” Axl panted. 

“Oh come on,” Richie said, refusing to let his hand be moved. “Feels good, don’t it? Tell the truth.”

_yes_

“Fuck off.”

Richie laughed again and, to Axl’s irritation and relief in equal measure, he didn’t stop. 

“Your attitude’s as tight as your asshole. You sure Jonny got his dick in here?”

With that, Axl deep-throated Jon Bon Jovi. The moment Jon arched his body up into his mouth, Axl forced himself numb from the neck down. Fuck Sambora. He wasn’t gonna fight it anymore-- Sambora could do what he wanted, the cunt. But he was gonna watch his pretty boy squirm in the ecstasy another man was causing him while he did it. 

Not just another man, actually. The only man who seemed able to exorcise this particular little monster Jon had. 

Or maybe he wasn’t exorcising it. Maybe he was feeding it. Who knew?

Who cared?

Jon grabbed Axl’s hair with both hands, his legs pulling upward, shaking. “Yeah… oh yeah, oh god…” he groaned, humping Axl’s mouth with abandon. 

And just as Axl had hoped for-- or at least expected-- Sambora’s hand fell away from him. He was simply watching now. Or plotting. It didn’t matter. Except that it probably would have felt good right that moment, while Jon was driving Axl’s brain nuts with excitement. 

The good boy came fast and hard, screaming obscenities as he did, and Axl swallowed. 

When he pulled back, Jon’s eyes were closed, and he was breathing hard, attempting to calm himself. A lazy smile stretched across his face. 

“Fuck…” he croaked. “That felt good.”

“You tired, angel?” Axl said, and Jon nodded, his eyes still closed. 

“I think I drank too much,” Jon said.

“You think so, huh?” Axl said. He crawled over top of the man and planted a kiss on his forehead. “Take a nap, babe.”

“N’kay.”

Climbing off the bed, Axl leveled a glare at Richie, who was watching the proceedings in some measure of disbelief. “Let him sleep the night. I’ll take the guest room, and the two of you can fuck off as soon as he wakes up.”

Richie watched the man turn away and stalk buck naked across the bedroom. He carried his shoulders back, and his arms wide, the international posture of ready-for-a-fight, and Richie stood up and followed him into the adjoining bedroom. It was a terrible idea, he knew it, but he couldn’t resist it. He had never been good at resisting feistiness. Even when it teetered on the edge of hostility. Hell, even when it long-jumped over the edge. 

Axl whirled around. “What the fuck are you doing?”

“I’m sorry. For the attitude comment. Okay?”

“Fine, get out.”

Richie took a few more steps into the room, and Axl put up a hand. 

“Stop,” he said. “If you come any closer to me, I will fucking end you.”

There was a tiny tremor in his voice, and Richie wasn’t sure if it was fear or anger. Or something else. 

“I don’t want to fight you, Axl.”

“Then leave.”

Richie almost turned around, his chest deflating. Then he said, “I didn’t fucking start this. You realize that, right? You’re the fucking instigator.”

“Hey. What happened between me and your boy was mutual. You were gone, asshole.”

Preparing for a firestorm-- or at least a fist-- Richie said, “What’s this really about, anyway? All of it. Who’s it about, huh?”

Axl took a step back, like he’d been physically pushed. His eyes roved over Richie, sizing him up, and when his voice came out, it was a low hiss of a sound that sent adrenaline through Richie’s body.

“Ohh, I was wondering when you’d get back around to Izzy, you piece of shit.”

“Oh, that’s right,” Richie said. “I’m not allowed to mention Izzy, but you can fuck Jon and send him fucking flowers and notes and shit, and talk to him on the phone--”

“He wanted it, Sambora. Every bit of it. He still wants it. He wants _me_.”

“Must be good to know someone does.”

It felt like daggers coming out of Richie, or shards of glass, the words from the nasty part of him, the mean part he rarely allowed into the open; it always left him with a very particular sort of nausea after the fact.

He watched the fight drain out of Axl Rose’s puffed-up posture. The man turned away and sat down on the edge of the bed. “Just go away, will you?” he said.

“I didn’t mean that,” Richie said.

“Yes, you did. And it’s fucking true. So just go away, okay?”

Richie nodded, even though he knew Axl wouldn’t see it, and turned to leave the room. He was almost to the door, when the man said,

“You remind me of him. A little bit. I wasn’t expecting that.”

His voice was hoarse, defeated, in a way that startled Richie to his core. Turning back toward the interior of the room, Richie waited for elaboration, but there was none, either in word or action.

He edged his way toward the bed, slowly, making sure the other man knew there was no threat in his movement, and sat down. The blue of Axl’s eyes was as clear as Jon’s, but there was a hollowness to it, a stark sadness, that Richie only saw in Jon’s during the absolute worst of times. 

Richie wanted to say something, anything, to make his eyes light up-- to give them the same sparkle of excitement and _life_ that he could put into Jon’s eyes with the smallest effort, but he knew it wouldn’t happen. It wasn’t his place to even try, and besides, that sadness was old. Older than any of the cruel comments Richie had made, older than Izzy leaving. Older, probably, than meeting Izzy in the first place. It would undoubtedly be there when Axl took his last breath.

He was right. Richie didn’t know what it was like, to be broken on so many levels, and to keep fucking trying. Richie wasn’t the guy who trashed hotel rooms and shot up with substances, and then sliced himself open and bled all over the stage to make other people forget about their problems for a couple of hours. 

Richie was a fixer. The holy water sprinkled over someone else’s demons. And he liked it that way.

So he did the only thing he could think to do in the moment: he put his lips to Axl’s and kissed him hard and deep, and hoped the other man would accept the contact. He did, and after a few moments, he wrapped his arms around Richie’s neck, pulling him in like he could draw sustenance from him. 

Richie kissed until his mouth hurt, until the muscles in his jaws ached, and he let Axl be the one to end it. When he finally did, Richie said,

“If you send one more flower to Jon, I’m gonna send a hitman to you.”

A gigantic grin spread over Axl’s face.

“Seriously,” Richie said, smiling himself. “I know a guy who gets shit done.”

“All right, all right. Get outta here.”

Richie let his hand brush along the man’s forearm as he let go of him, and Axl had to make an effort not to lean into the touch to prolong it. He watched the man leave the bedroom and shut the door behind him before he sank down onto the bed again and let himself cry. 

Then he picked up the phone.

He told himself he was gonna keep his words steady while he talked. Wasn’t gonna create any unnecessary melodrama. But as soon as he heard the familiar voice on the other end, the tears came again.

“I can’t deal with this,” he said. “I miss you too much.”

There was a long pause, familiar as the voice. Then Izzy said, “So come out and see me when you’re done. Stay a few days. Who’s stopping you?”

Axl closed his eyes and exhaled.

**END**


End file.
